Games of Strategy
by Eatsscissors
Summary: She has one final chance to help her guy. Crossover with 'Brimstone', spoilers for 'Not Fade Away'.


TITLE: Games of Strategy  
RATING: I'll give it a PG-13 just in case.   
FANDOMS/SPOILERS: Crossover between A:tS and Brimstone written for **trollprincess**'s latest Pairing List That Ate Fandom Challenge. Through 'Not Fade Away' for Angel, and since it's been years since I saw Brimstone, we'll say...through the finale?  
PAIRING: Cordelia/Angel, Cordelia/Satan  
SUMMARY: She has one final chance to help her guy.  
DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and an entire group of people who aren't me.  
  
Giles had played chess, back in the 'dale. So had Oz, in those flashes of nerdy brilliance that he sometimes showed like the odd whitecap on an otherwise placid sea. None of the other Scoobies had ever shown an interest, and so the board and its gleaming pieces had most often sat in the corner of Giles' office in favor of more apocolyptic concerns. Cordelia wished now that she had taken more of an interest.  
  
"Your move," the well-dressed man with the faintest suggestion of a hiss to his voice said, offering her a smile that was designed to make the fruit fall from the tree and every woman within hearing distance melt into their shoes. Cordelia didn't let emotion show on her face. She moved her bishop, crossing her fingers beneath the table. Her adversary smirked as he took him, and Cordelia's crossed fingers turned themselves into a fist. "Sorry, but I'm afraid that's going to cost you."  
  
In the portal behind them, the demon taht looked like nothing so much as a clumsy tomato with hair drove a knife into Wesley's stomach and twisted, doing damage that Cordelia didn't need a medical degree to see was fatal. Wesley gasped as he crumpled to the ground, and Cordelia placed her hand to her abdomen as if she was the one that had been wounded. There was a stinging wetness to her eyes that she didn't dare acknowledge, for fear that doing so would give it power.  
  
"This isn't right."  
  
Her opponent's smile was sly and almost sad. "Been a long time since the world operated based upon what's right. Now it's just about who controls the pieces." His hand hovered over the board, drawing Cordelia's attention away from the blue figure that knelt by Wesley as he died. "And I believe it's my turn."  
  
"I could flip the board over," Cordelia threatened, gripping the edges of the table very hard to keep herself from doing exactly that.  
  
"And then they all die." That smile again. Cordelia wished that he would realize that she wasn't really the kind of girl to go with Tall, Dark, and Utterly Without Conscience and knock it off. She settled for an arched eyebrow and a look cold enough to freeze out the sun, taking her hands away from the table and placing them pointedly in her lap. "That's a good girl." His next move was impossible for Cordelia to follow on the board, but it caused the largest group of demons that she had ever seen to go marching across the portal. Satan's face was that of a mother cat watching her kitten catch its first mouse as one of the demons flipped over a car.   
  
"Thought you didn't believe in things like good."  
  
A negligent wave of the hand told Cordelia that she was being a very silly woman, but he was going to indulge her anyway. Because he liked her. "Figure of speech. Now, the game?" If Cordelia didn't know better, she would swear that the hint of tongue she saw when he spoke was forked.   
  
"If you think that a little game like this," Cordelia waved her hand across the board like she wasn't stalling for time. Meanwhile, the horde continued its march through the LA streets to the alley where her guy waited, painting the sidewalks with blood as they went. The rain washed the gore into a dusky pink that gleamed where the streetlights caught it. "-is going to decide Angel's destiny, then you don't know him at all."  
  
"My dear," he said, and Cordelia had never known a voice to create such a contrasting blend of emotions, "little games like thsi have been deciding destinies for eons." The tilt of his head told Cordelia that she should make her move. She held her breath and slid her knight across the board.  
  
In the alley, Angel brought down his sword.  
  
Satan chuckled as he moved through the opening that Cordelia had left for him, knocking the knight from his position with more force than was entirely necessary as he moved to the end of the board. "And I believe that this is a checkmate."  
  
Angel gasped as a demon's blade pierced his side. Cordelie bit her lip until she tasted her own blood. "We'll play again."  
  
The devil shook his head. "It doesn't work that way, my dear. You lost, therefore he lost, and that's the end of this little fairy-tale."  
  
Angel fell beneath a swarm of demons too numerous to count. Though the portal allowed no passage of sound, Cordelia could see his lips moving as he yelled instructions to the thing that had once been Fred. Cordelia's heart fell to somewhere around her kneecaps as Angel's back splashed into the mud. "It doesn't work like this. You don't get to win."  
  
The sorrowful look was back. Cordelia would be far more inclined to believe in it if she hadn't already seen the mildew that lay beneath the shiny candy exterior. "Actually, I do."  
  
Cordelia's eyes ticked past him, to the portal. Her jaw dropped, and heart began to climb back into her chest cavity. "Actually, you don't."  
  
He turned, catching sight of the portal. The look which overcame his face was enough to make Cordelia clap her hands together and laugh like a little girl. In the alley, the Illyria thing was tearing through demons with a rage that could not be mistaken for anything other than personal grief. The dragon's wing clipped her head, opening up a deep gash above her eye, as he seized it and hurled it to her earth. She killed it quickly, waving its entrails about her head like ribbons for a moment before she lost interest and moved towards Angel. A gleaming sword thrust itself out of the murk, slicing three demons in half and leaving the pieces to twitch as life ran out of them. Illyria broke the spine of a fourth and extended her hand to help Angel back to his feet. Cordelia thought her grin was going to split her face.  
  
"Is that the destiny that you're supposed to control?" The devil glared at her and she pushed the chessboard forward, inquring sweetly, "Play again?"

End


End file.
